What’s the first thing that people usually say when you mention you’re having an electrical issue? “Check your grounds” will be the response most of the time…so that tells you just how important proper grounding techniques are. In this tech video from Haltech, you’ll learn some best practices when it comes to grounding your vehicle’s ECU.

Vehicles with aftermarket ECUs will have a complex wiring structure if they’re fuel-injected or have a large number of additional sensors that add to the chaos. You have to follow proper wiring theory if you want to avoid problems, and that means everything needs to be ground the right way. There’s a lot of different opinions on how you should wire something, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right way.

The ground’s job is to close the circuit of the electrical system and you can use the vehicle itself or the engine as a grounding location. The problem is that using the vehicle or engine as the ground for an ECU is there could be voltage irregularities. You don’t want an expensive ECU getting too much voltage or start to have sensor issues because of voltage fluctuations. The star method of grounding is an effective way to prevent unintended voltage issues due to improper grounding.

Matt from Haltech does an outstanding job in this video breaking down the technical aspects of ECU wiring, what kind of issues you can run into when you don’t ground things properly, why proper ECU grounding is so important, and how you can avoid grounding issues.